In The Beginning (Be Still Farms inaugural blog post)

Welcome to our inaugural blog post!

At Be Still Farms we know how important healthy, fresh and local eating is to us and for so many others. But for the McNamaras that hasn’t always been the case. Yes, both our families taught us the broad concepts of “eating healthy”, but for a long time we struggled with what that should look like in our everyday lives.

As we began our family and I really started to look at what we were eating and what I was feeding our children, I realized that I had no idea how to define what our parents meant by “eating healthy”. In search of a guiding principle for determining what I would put on our dinner table I began a long journey of reading and research. Unfortunately I found that with each new scientific study and each new fad diet that came along, it all became even more confusing. Are carbs bad and protein good? Should we drink cow milk or soy milk? And what about meat? On top of it all I knew if we were going to be successful eating healthy, our meals were also going to have to taste good- really good- otherwise I knew our chances of success would diminish.

Along the way I began to hear more and more about eating and preparing whole foods, growing organically, buying locally, and the importance of limiting processed foods in our diets. I began to look around our kitchen and found that for a family that was already trying to eat healthy we certainly had a lot of food in our home that would not be considered whole food. I began to research more about this way of eating, growing and shopping and something clicked. As I planned our menus, shopped, and prepared our meals I began to serve food to my family that was as close as possible to the way God originally made it. That meant for example that instead of our tomatoes coming as perfect red orbs or out of a can, they would now come to us organically, grown locally as possible. Our chicken was roasted whole, not served out of a box breaded, fried, frozen and reheated. I made it my goal to come home from the grocery store with as few pre-packaged items as possible. It became a fun challenge for me to see which additional can or box I could put on the chopping block each week.

It took some time, but eventually I even began grinding my own wheat, along with other grains, and baking my own bread for my family and friends. I now use our own fresh ground grains for all of my baking and enjoy scouring the web and cookbooks for new, interesting and of course yummy ways to bake with them. The health benefits of cooking with fresh ground, organic grains alone make it worth it, but we have also found that the flavor and texture is amazing too. As incredible as it sounds, now our children won't stand for the "yucky tasting" store bought bread!

I look forward to sharing all that I have learned and am continuing to learn about eating and preparing whole foods. Here's to being healthy together!

Blessings from Michelle and all the Macs

The Carolinas, USA

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